Eli Lederhendler

This work covers New York City politics and culture in the 1950s and 1960s and the inner life of one of the city's largest ethnic/religious groups. It explores the decline of secular Jewish ethnic culture, the growth of Jewish religious factions, and the rise of a more assertive ethnocentrism.

New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950-1970

Facing the dizzying array of changes commonly referred to as modernity, Jews in 19th-century Eastern Europe and early 20th-century America reflected the crises and opportunities of the modern world most eloquently in their speech, culture, and literature. Relying on those spoken and written words as eyewitnesses, Eli Lederhendler illustrates how the self- perceptions of Jews evolved, both in the Old World and among immigrants to America. He focuses on a wide range of subjects to provide an overview of this clash between old and new and to reveal ways in which cultural conflicts were reconciled. How, for instance, was messianic language adapted to serve nationalistic goals? What did America signify to Jewish thinkers at the turn of the century? What do Jewish user's guides to the New World tell us about Jewish secular culture and its perspective on sex, love, marriage, etiquette, and health? More generally, what do Jewish letters and literature tell us about how communities adapt to radically new environments? Jewish Responses to Modernity highlights the manner in which codes and symbols are passed from one generation to the next, reinforcing a group's sense of self and helping to define its relations with other. The book clearly demonstrates the importance of language as a vehicle for minority-group self-expression in the past and in the present.

New Voices in America and Eastern Europe

Jewish Responses to Modernity

Bringing together contributions from established scholars as well as promising younger academics, the seventeenth volume of this established series offers a broad-ranging view of why Judaism, a religion whose observance is more honored in the breach in most western Jewish communities, has garnered attention, authority, and controversy in the late twentieth century. The volume considers the ways in which theological writings, sweeping social change, individual or small-group needs, and intra-communal diversity have re-energized Judaism even amidst secular trends in America and Israel.

Volume XVII: Who Owns Judaism? Public Religion and Private Faith in America and Israel

Studies in Contemporary Jewry

Professor of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry Head of the School of History Faculty of the Humanities Eli Lederhendler

In the United States, Jews have bridged minority and majority cultures - their history illustrates the diversity of the American experience.

American Jewry

Eli Lederhendler demonstrates that the Russian Jewish immigrants' distinctive characteristics were developed through a realignment of Jewish social values in response to their new experiences.

Eli Lederhendler

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